The Unexpected Feeling
by S.R Devaste
Summary: Cameron returns to House's office searching for something she has lost, but it is House who has finally found what he has been looking for all this time.


I came into his office because I had forgotten the feeling. The feeling was like his smell, plastic, wood, antiseptic and occasionally beer, but weighted into me. His presence was like an indent on those executive toys that look like medieval torture devices. When you put your hand against it and it looks like it should sting, but it doesn't. Except for with House it actually did. I didn't miss it—I couldn't even remember what there would be to miss. I'm sure I looked like a lost child, up past her bed time. I still felt like a childhood even though now everyone treated me like an adult. Chase, Cuddy, Foreman, I bet even he would too. But that's not why I was here.

I touched the edges of the spines of the books, they were cold. His whole room was cold and my arms were coated in goosebumps like dirt. I tried to shake them off. My finger caught on a red and gold book: Lupus. I tried to smile, but I couldn't find a reason too. I knew it was funny, I remembered laughing. I could see the logistics the system of the joke, but there was no suppressed smile.

"Dr. Cameron," he drawled "You know I know a real good PI service if you want to waste less time."

Arebic, I catalogued. I organized his mail, his comments, his life, his emotions, it wasn't suprising how quickly I tabbed his words. I could hear his footsteps the sound of sneakers against a too-soft carpet, somewhere between a squish and a step. His breath was like a faint afterthought of a sound. He was getting closer.

"Then again you probably don't see it as wasting time." His voice was more to the right now, but I didn't turn around. I didn't want to. His voice hadn't illicited any response, what if his face didn't. It had to be a neurological disease, this lack of response. I have never moved on, not from anything. Everytime I see butterflies I think of my husband, hear the star-spangled banner or see fireworks I think of my father. And yet the words Lupus were burned brighter into my brain than the fact that his breath soft and almost sweet was getting closer.

"Wilson did mention you once House." It was a lie, but who doesn't need a lie?

I imagined his eyes narrowing and waited for the pang of jealousy. It didn't come, and neither did his response. I almost turned around just for some sense of victory, but then I stopped myself. Hadn't I already won? Completely unaffected even as I was throwing my emotions at his mercy.

"What did he say?" His tone distanced itself, and I could no longer taste him on the air. Maybe it was just my senses readjusting though.

"Sometimes he says he misses you, though mostly he just complains about how much of an ass you are." I pushed the Lupus back in a little bit. It was time to leave. I was stone, perfect, the heroic doctor I had always wanted to be. I turned around.

He wasn't even looking at me and I could see the steel in his eyes. It was fire. And then I felt it, but it was not the same. I was afraid. He was looking at me, the same way he looked at a closed door that he didn't want to be closed and could not open. There were very few of those. I felt no pride, but I had won. "I just wanted to--"

His pupils dialate, and I wonder if it is dopamine flooding his system by accident or if I actually am a puzzle all over again. "You're not talking about Wilson."

"I'm not talking about me." I didn't know who I was talking about, but I only knew how to lie to him.

"Bullshit." And he closes the distance between us. There is no space to feel his breath, my eyes cannot focus on his edges. I should be burning but I am not. Maybe I am steel too. I reach up to touch his hand inadvertently. Pavlovian, he makes a cruel response and I reach out for love. Except for I'm not even hungry any more, and I can barely here the bell.

For the first time he takes it. He clenches it until my bones are pressed together. I tug it away, but it does not move. Now I tilt my chin up, just to meet his eyes. I have no hidden syringe, no agenda.

And this is what he has been waiting for, for when my eyes were vacant, when my heart refused to palpitate. He gives a crooked smile, as if I am a familiar piece of artwork that has been crooked for a long time, but only recently got a ladder tall enough to turn it right. I feel only vertigo, no pain, no heat.

He tilts my chin up, and I can the range of motion his lips are capable of. But by the time I can fully comprehend the fact that once in my life he may actually take a road which requires a running jump he is already in the air.

Our lips know each other as aquantines, and at first his kisses are surprisingly light. Hello, do you remember me? I am still. He pulls me closer. Then he his fierce, his hands finding tangles even in my straight blonde hair. The other dips to the small of my back. My hands have already supported his back. I calculate my weight so I won't disturb him.

I am not in denile about how bad this is, how little I feel. I kiss him back anyways. But then when he leaves for a breath I haven't taken since I entered I feel it. Ah, the sweet little sting of pinpricks of air. For that's what House always was, he was the pain.

I pull him back, and entangle myself in him, on his desk until every part of me hurts. But the pain isn't just pain, it is the warming up of my joints to certain angles. Risk, that's there too, hormones and chemicals colliding, mashing into my organs, into my brain. His hands tremble at the top of my labcoat. He does not ask, but I refuse.

Instead I kiss him, the nose, the cheek, the neck. My fingers graze up and down his cheek where his stubble has been strip-mined. I rub myself across him like lotion until it is by the increments of my breath and smell that he will measure everything else.

We are all dying slowly, but with House I die so fast I can see how the world moves. Sunsets move like symphonic dances, lips tangle and untangle until they form words together in some language that was never supposed to be spoken.

Until the dead reform into the living, and pain turns to pleasure.


End file.
